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The Open Court of Inquiry. THE EDITOR . The Obliquity of the Ecliptic. “In the Copernican system we have ‘the inclination of the earth’s axis.’ In the Koreshan System, would it not be the tilt or inclination of the axis of the cen tral sun away from the plane of the ter restrial equator? At what period of the Mazzarothic cycle does the inclination oc cur, and when may we expect it to be tilted back into its normal and proper po sition ? Do the changes occur gradually or suddenly? Has the inclination any thing to do with what is called the fall of man and his inclination to be erratic and evil ? Have the variation of the seasons, and the constant and fierce elemental strife, storm, and violence arising there from, any relation to similar conditions in the world of mankind?” The ecliptic in the physical heavens is the path of the visible sun; that path, determined by the plane of the orbit of the central sun, is oblique to the equator 23^ ° at the present time. W e speak simply of the obliquity of the ecliptic. The ecliptic changes in obliquity as related to the equator; in time, it may possess all degree of obli quity; sometimes it is at right augles to the equator; and again coincidental with it. E very change of the ecliptic in rela tion to the equator denotes some change in the relation of the path of the divine Sun to humanity. W e are nearing the time when the ecliptic and equator will be coincidental; that is, the solar and lunar systems will become one, typical of the biunity of the coming perfect manhood, which will comprise the solar annulus. There is to occur in humanity the complete conjunction of the Fatherhood and Motherhood of Deity, the Sun and Moon of humanity; near the time of the occurrence of that conjunction, the ecliptic will resume its coincidental position with the equa tor. The unity of the solar and lunar systems will mark the time of the ushering in of the divine kingdom in earth. W hen the ecliptic and equator become coincidental, an annulus of light will appear in the physical heav ens, and there will be universal day for thousands of years. This is the Golden A ge of both the physical and anthropostic worlds. The change in obliquity of the ecliptic is both gradual and sudden— that is, there is a slow movement of the ecliptic on the sol stitial colure all the time; but the times come when there are sudden move ments covering several degrees. The next jump will be about 2 3 ^ °. A s the dropping of the ecliptic back to a position coincidental with the equator is analogous to the perfection of humanity, or a portion of it, and the manifestation of the divine Eight throughout the world, it follows that the departure of the ecliptic from the equatorial plane, marks the fall of man, and the production of night in the world, the type of mental darkness. The movement of the ecliptic on the colure marks a cycle of given length, during which a number of sudden changes in the obliquity of the ecliptic occur, together with tilts of the poles of the earth. W e can conceive that when the ecliptic is at right angles with the equator, the path of the sun being over the poles, the conditions in the physical world must indeed be rigorous, and human life reduced to the minimum of manifestation or number of members of the human race. The past dispen sation has been conducive to prolifica- tion in humanity. There are great clim axes in the cycle, in which both the physical cosmos and the human world reach perfection. And there are crises and cataclysms, storms and upheavals, sinking of continents and the m aking of seas. That many of such changes are sud den is proven by the fact that the now extinct mammoths which are unearthed in the frigid regions, give evidence of having been killed in catastrophe while feeding. Before the great catastrophe which buried the mammoths in tombs of ice, the frigid portions of Siberia were undoubtedly tropical. E very change in the physical cosmos, every great cataclysm, flood, and earthquake, is indicative of a corresponding change in the human world. Truth and Natural Symbols. In proportion as a man’s life comes into union with truth, his thoughts ap proach to a parallelism with the currents of natural laws, so that he easily ex presses his meaning by natural symbols, or uses the ecstatic or poetic speech.— Emerson . DRAINAGE OF THE EVERGLADES. Evidences that the Proposed Work Endangers the Best Interests of Florida. E d i t o r TimES - Union :—This long- mooted subject has lately received new impetus from Governor Broward’s active interest in it; but the discussion is alto gether too much one-sided. Many a man who has looked upon, or read of that wonderful morass of muck and decaying vegetation, has at once set his envious imagination at work to conjure up what cane, cabbages, and beans it would pro duce, if brought into cultivation. Not because there is any great scarcity of these things and the people are hungry, for often there is such plethora that fruit and vegetables are dumped into the har bors to enable the dealers to maintain prices, which do not as a rule yield enough profits to enrich the railroads and com mission men, without at the same time impoverishing the producers; but with an inordinate desire,*born seemingly of unrequited toil, the farmer always wants more land to grow more cabbages, to enrich more railroads, to lay more tracks to reach more farmers to grow more cab bages to enrich more railroads, etc., in a never-ceasing grind, involving all man kind into the relentless struggle for the dollar, until there seems to be no incen tive but greed, no god but gold; and with this Midas infatuation there is no place too sacred, or beauty too fascinating, to escape the vandalism of avarice. Already our forests have been denuded until equable seasons and salubrious climes, so the scientists tell us, have been changed to periods of severe drouths and violent floods, of extremes of heat and of cold. Sacr ific es to Mo lo ch . There is no scenery too charming, no curiosity too rare, but it must be sacrificed to the Moloch of money. Already the Niagara has been penstocked for electric power until the gorge begins to look like a titanic boiler-shop; and we may hear at any time that some enterprising Yankee is harnessing the geysers of Yosemite to run dynamos for the Northwest. The Adirondacks of New York and the giant Sequeia trees of California are only pre served by the determined hand of law. And now the mystery of the Everglades, whose watery solitudes and tangled laby<- rinths are threaded only by the wily Sem inole, are to be raped with the plow to ren der it too, a concubine, yielding offspring to the god of gold.
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 19, No. 6 · Jul 18, 1905 · PDF p. 12